Vulture View, my long-awaited book with Steve Jenkins, has just been released by Holt. Yippee! Look for a review of it in the October 15th issue of Booklist.
For those of you that want to learn more about vultures, here are some good links.

I have had plenty of interactions with turkey vultures. When I was in high school I worked at Pete Conroy’s raptor rehabilitation center at Furman University in Greenville, SC. We took care of a young, rather clueless turkey vulture. I learned then just how shy and retiring these birds are in comparison with hawks and owls. I also learned how to gather roadkill. Yes, whenever I saw a dead opossum, I would pull my little blue King Cab to the side of the road and go pick up the carcass. This involved grabbing its long pinkish tail and swinging the thing into the back of the cab. This was dinner for the turkey vulture. When you are taking care of animals, you do whatever is necessary. Actually, it’s not a messy job, at all, thanks to that sturdy opossum tail.

Jeff and I have also seen turkey vultures migrating through Panama. I will try to post some photos of those turkey vulture kettles another day. We saw them swirling by the hundreds and thousands.

Now when I see turkey vultures I think of the words of the book. I think of the lovely illustrations by Steve Jenkins. Wait until you see the vulture faces! Why, they are positively attractive! It is amazing what art and some cut paper can do.

Vulture View, a Theodor Geisel Honor Book, American Library Association. I am so excited about this book! It explores the life of vultures, surely some of the most underappreciated cleaners in the world. It also teaches kids about warm air rising and cooling air sinking. (more…)

Have the children use what they observe by looking and listening to make a map of their surroundings . . . the school, the schoolyard, the neighborhood, maybe the entire city!

Before or after a study of mapping, or a study of human explorers/adventurers, you might want to have kids talk about great journeys. Read Home At Last to introduce journeys. Using information from books or the web, look at maps to see where animals migrate.

The Arctic tern in the book, a bird which travels from Antarctica to the Arctic, is also a great introduction to these regions and their differences. The bird spends summer in both places.

Sea Turtles are animals that make tremendous journeys
too!

And then those are those smaller journeys, through time and small spaces. Listen to this story and find the journeys and pathways followed by bumblebees.

Caribou, lobsters, warblers, arctic terns, and many other animals have two homes and migrate in between. Join migration creatures on their journey and rejoice when they reach their destination with the soothing refrain “home at last.” This bedtime book, which has many layers of meaning, is also a great classroom book for the study of fluency, voice, and refrain.

April Pulley Sayre is an award-winning children’s book author of over 55 natural history books for children and adults. Her read-aloud nonfiction books, known for their lyricism and scientific precision, have been translated into French, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean. She is best known for pioneering literary ways to immerse young readers in natural events via creative storytelling and unusual perspectives.